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I have two 500GB drives, and previously I had XP installed and Debian. 6 months ago I replaced one of the drives, and only XP survived. But that's okay. I cleaned up the mess.

I need to setup the Debian again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMyfljiCz3A This is the reference video... Now I am trying to install Debian 5.0.5 Lenny.

Anyhow. There are four main partitions prior to the Debian installation: 1 for XP, 65GB is reserved for Debian, and 2 others for file storage.

I parted the 65GB for Debian, had a very similar setup (almost identical) as shown in that youtube video.

The setup went fine, but I could not boot from GRUB. I don't see the grub menu at all. I was left hanging with GRUB _ a blanking cursor.

I tried out with the resuce mode using the Debian CD 1:

shell#: cat /proc/mdstat

md1: active raid 1 sad10[0] sdb10[1]
55472320 blocks [2/2 ][UU]
md0: active raid 1 sad7[0] sdb7[1]
120384 blocks [2/2 ][UU]

shell#: mdadm --detail /dev/md0 (i can do it for md1 as well)

number major minor raidDevice state
0 8 7 0 active sync /dev/sda7
1 8 23 1 active sync /dev/sdb7

I am now in rescue mode, what should I do? Thank you

edited:

shell#: df -h

/dev/mapper/acm_main-root Mounted on /
/dev/md0 Mounted on /boot
/dev/mapper/acm_main-home Mounted on /home
/dev/mapper/acm_tmp-tmp Mounted on /tmp
/dev/mapper/acm_main-usr Mounted on /usr
/dev/mapper/acm_main-var Mounted on /var
tmpfs Mounted on /dev

Anyone has a thought on this? At least I have to get back to Windows..... Any help is appreciated!

By the way, grub command is not found in the rescue mode...

1 Answer 1

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You likely need to setup grub on both disks since you're in RAID-1. If your rescue disk does not have grub, I suggest downloading and burning Knoppix on a CD and boot from that. Run the following once all is booted:

# grub
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> root (hd1,0)
grub> setup (hd1)

Your output should be similar to below:

# grub

    GNU GRUB  version 0.95  (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

 [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.  For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
   completions of a device/filename.]

grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd

grub> setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  15 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+15 p (hd0,0)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done.

grub> root (hd1,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd

grub> setup (hd1)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd1)"...  15 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd1) (hd1)1+15 p (hd1,0)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done.

grub> quit

After that, you should be able to get past the blinking cursor. Hope this helps!

6
  • Knoppix is another 6xx MB image right? Can I use Ubuntu live CD instead? I don't have the latest one, maybe 9.1?
    – CppLearner
    Aug 15, 2010 at 23:31
  • Using Ubuntu live CD should work for sure. Just open a command prompt and run those commands.
    – vmfarms
    Aug 15, 2010 at 23:39
  • root (hd0,0) i got filesystem type unknwon, \partition type 0x7. setup (hd0) i had cannot mount selected partition. i am not using ext3 btw, i am using ReiserFS.... does this make a difference?
    – CppLearner
    Aug 15, 2010 at 23:54
  • When you run: root (hd0,0), it's assuming that your first partition is your /boot partition. What's probably happening is (hd0,0) is your old Windows partition. Run the command again, but time time, after typing '(hd0', press tab a few times to display a list of available partitions. You should see one listed as type: Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83. Use that number instead, so it looks like: setup (hd0,1). You'll need to do the same on the other drive.
    – vmfarms
    Aug 16, 2010 at 0:07
  • hi. thank you. i am actually encountering a second problem: one of my volume group is missing.... so debian returned error... should i make a new thread instead?
    – CppLearner
    Aug 16, 2010 at 0:48

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